Just Write {41}

June 25, 2012

There were older boys walking by and they took the boys’ soccer ball as they went and kept going. This was quickly reported back to the mother whose house our boys were playing in front of with friends. She told her oldest son to go get the ball.

Just ask them if the ball is theirs, she said. So he did. He gathered courage and picked up his bike and hopped on to go find them and it was almost like he wanted the challenge–the adventure.

He came back with the ball.

My eyes were wide when she told me this, the way she encouraged her boy to figure it out. She told him, If they won’t give it back, just leave.It’s not worth fighting over.

He came back with the ball. No big thing. He surprised them. He said they acted nervous and couldn’t answer his question. Is that your ball? And then they threw it to him without a word and he gave it back to my sons.

Days before this I was getting out of the car in the driveway and the older boys went by and pretended to shoot me with toy guns and hands poised like weapons–mean-spirited. I grumbled and glared and stalked off, annoyed, into the safety of my trenches, my bunker through my front door.

Now I think about a boy on a bike asking for the ball back and I wish I had dropped to the ground, acting as if I’d been hit by the rapid fire from their mouths. Rolling and groaning and waiting to see, is that what you wanted, boys? I wish I had done that and then popped up to laugh.

Let’s do this.

Sometimes you have to surprise people right out of themselves. Next time maybe I’ll fall down and roll and groan and then watch their eyes widen and then I’ll walk away if they don’t laugh,

unscathed.

you can learn something from kids every time.

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This is the 41st installment of Just Write, an exercise in free writing your ordinary and extraordinary moments. {Please see the details here.} I would love to read your freely written words so join me and link up below. You can add the url of your post at any time. Just be sure it’s a link to your Just Write post, not to your main page. Then please link back to this post in your post so people know where to go if they’d like to join in.) (Any links not following those two guidelines will be deleted.)

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